Mr. Speaker!: The Life and Times of Thomas B. Reed The Man Who Broke the Filibuster

James Grant’s enthralling biography of Thomas B. Reed, Speaker of the Home throughout one of the vital turbulent occasions in American historical past—the Gilded Age, the many years earlier than the ascension of reformer President Theodore Roosevelt—brings to life one of many brightest, wittiest, and most consequential political stars in our historical past.

The final many years of the nineteenth century had been a unstable period of rampantly corrupt politics. It was a time of each stupendous progress and monetary panic, of land bubbles and passionate and generally violent populist protests. Votes had been brazenly purchased and offered in a Congress paralyzed by the abuse of the Home filibuster by members who refused to answer roll name even when current, depriving the physique of a quorum. Reed put an finish to this stalemate, empowered the Republicans, and altered the Home of Representatives all the time.

The Speaker’s beliefs in majority rule had been put to the check in 1898, when the sinking of the usS. Maine in Havana Harbor arrange a preferred clamor for conflict towards Spain. Reed resigned from Congress in protest.

A bigger-than-life character, Reed checks each field of the perfect biographical topic. He is a vital and vital determine. He modified without end the best way the Home of Representatives does its enterprise. He was humorous and irreverent. He’s, briefly, nice firm. “What I most admire about you, Theodore,” Reed as soon as remarked to his earnest younger protégé, Teddy Roosevelt, “is your unique discovery of the Ten Commandments.”

After he resigned his seat, Reed practiced regulation in New York. He was profitable. He additionally discovered a soul mate within the legendary Mark Twain. They admired each other’s mordant wit. Grant’s full of life and erudite narrative of this tumultuous period—the raucous late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—is a gripping portrait of a United States poised to burst its bounds and of the boys who had been defining it.

Writer ‏ : ‎ Simon & Schuster; First Version (Could 10, 2011)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 448 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1416544933
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1416544937
Merchandise Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.5 kilos
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.13 x 1.3 x 9.25 inches